Word on the Street

In keeping with my determination to actually write, I have stumbled upon something that is helping me. I’m calling it the “daily paragraph” exercise.

Simple enough, it is exactly what it sounds like. Every day (well, weekdays right now) I sit down at the computer and for ten or fifteen minutes, I write. Write, write, write, anything. I set a limit of no more than five paragraphs. I am writing about the weather, a dream, food, past memories, current computer problems, made up trauma, drama, anything and everything.

What surprises me is how little I edit. I still can’t just throw words on the page, and I am constantly restructuring sentences or phrases, but I refuse to dwell on things to the point of stagnation. In the past, any paragraph that didn’t feel complete was reworked, lingered over, until it felt done. The daily paragraph is such a different feel. It gets to be more free flow, it gets to be imperfect.

If I feel the need to write something more than five paragraphs, I am free to open a new page and write there, but the daily paragraph remains unaltered. When I read through them (which I have only done twice), I am surprised by how much I enjoy them. Of course they are raw, a bit overdone in places, too sparse in others, disjointed at times, but they feel more like the writing I want to do.